Margaret Meade

Margaret Meade

Margaret Meade, who has died aged 99, was born Elizabeth Margaret Wilson into a Quaker family of prominent pacifists in Hoylake, Cheshire. One of my mother's first memories was being told, during the first world war, to stand away from the windows in case the house was stoned by those who considered pacifism unpatriotic. Her early life revolved around Quaker activities, particularly her father's work helping conscientious objectors released from prison.

At the age of 16, she was enchanted when her class was taken to the meadows around Withington girls' school, Manchester, to observe the grasses, flowers, insects and birds and to learn why they were there. When she told her parents and three brothers about this exciting new subject - her teacher called it "ecology" - they scoffed. But the experience gave Margaret a lifelong interest in nature, and she became an accomplished birdwatcher and gardener, winning countless prizes in garden shows and writing the Nature Notes column for Cambridge newspapers.

After Bedford College, London, she became secretary to the League of Nations Union in Oxford, and there met the future Nobel-prizewinning economist James Meade, whom she married in 1933. The couple moved to Geneva, which Margaret knew from holidays when her parents were wardens of the Quaker hostel in the 1920s. She retained a special love for Switzerland, making annual visits until she was 96. The fam- ily fled from Geneva in May 1940 and there followed two unhappy years in the US, while James remained in London helping the economic effort of the war at the war cabinet secretariat.

Back in England, once all four children were in school, Margaret added a social administration diploma to her sociology degree. She taught at the London School of Economics and supervised students in Cambridge.

During the next 50 years, she became known and loved by young Cambridge economists for her hospitality to James's students and colleagues. She helped set up and, for many years, chaired a Quaker residential community for young delinquents. James died in 1995. She is survived by four children, eight grandchildren and 14 great-grandchildren.